Friday, December 30, 2016

**
A reader requested that we examine the book The Ultimate Heresy
by Rodger Cragun, which we will do in two installments over the next
two issues. The peculiar stance of this book is that the concept of
Biblical inerrancy is a heresy.
Cragun, not surprisingly, has more than a few problems with his approach and overall theory.

First, Cragun spends an inordinate amount of time -- about half
of the book -- showing from the Bible itself that the Bible is never
called "the Word of God, " and showing that the phrase, when used,
refers to something else, like a single specific prophecy.

Really now.

For those who may have missed it, I discovered that without Cragun's help some time ago:
The Bible as "Word of God." KNM has insisted that Skeptics have
"always" as their "underlining (sic) issue" whether the Bible is the
Word of God. I have replied that this is not my own focus in argument; I
concern myself rather with whether the Bible's contents are true,
logical, or practical. If it is on all counts, then it being the "Word
of God" is simply, as it were, a cherry on top, but contributes nothing
new in utilitarian terms.

A relevant observation here is that designating the Bible to be
the "Word of God" is itself a post-Biblical phenomenon. An apostle or
prophet who heard that phrase would not have thought of a book, but
rather, of the transcendant thoughts and words of YHWH. It could
certainly have not meant the whole Bible prior to its completion and
compilation, and when the phrase “word of God” is used in the Bible, it
always means some specific prophetic utterance, or some message (like
the Gospel).

This would of course include what is within the contents of the
Bible; but as well, "Word of God" implies a universality of application
that simply is not true of much of the text. In precise terms, for
example, the book of Zephaniah could be said to report the words of God
TO Zephaniah concerning judgment on specific nations. As I have noted
many times, this is symptomatic of modern Sunday School lessons that
strive mightily to make even books like Leviticus applicable to modern
life -- which is a mistake.

In that respect, while we may not necessarily find it fruitful to
abandon "Word of God" as a designation for the Bible as a whole, and I
would not advocate doing so because of the confusion it would cause at
this late date, it does represent an anachronism that should be
clarified. In a proper technical sense, the collection we call the Bible
represents two collections of covenant documents, and so "Old
Testament" and "New Testament" are actually more precise and helpful
than "Word of God".

And so, as I have told KNM, the concern should not be, "is the
Bible the Word of God." More than that, it should not even be whether it
is "from God," but rather, the more basic questions of whether it is
true, logical, practical, and so on as applicable. The former way is a
carryover, I suspect, of the work of well-meaning evangelists and
teachers (like Billy Graham) who were accustomed to being able to invoke
the Bible as "the Word of God" and get immediate respect and authority.
It worked well for a time, but it no longer does. But if we show that
the Bible is true, then one is able to open the door to the possibility
that God’s messages have in some way been transmitted in the text as a
medium.
To illustrate, one might say that this posting is the “word of
JPH” or “from JPH.” But the truth of the post does not in any way depend
on it being MY word, as opposed to that of, say, Tekton ministry
associates like Nick Peters or “Punkish." If you decide my "word" here
is true -- you can worry about whether it is from me later...or even not
at all, if you choose.

Not that any of this matters, since it is hard to see what point
Cragun thinks he is proving in the first place. While some modern
preachers may use the shorthand phrase, "the Word of God," to refer to
the Bible, only an infantile Christian would fail to see that to use
this as an argument that the Bible is the Word of God is circular
reasoning. Thus, in essence, Cragun spends about half his book knocking
down an exceptionally infantile argument.

A far better "argument" for inerrancy -- though more of a common
sense notion than an actual argument -- would be a syllogism Cragun
presents all too briefly:

God is perfect.

What God thinks is perfect.

From that which God thinks He reveals to people.

What He reveals to people must therefore be perfect.
Unfortunately, Cragun doesn't deal with this syllogism except to
dismiss it as, "Aristotelian logic." The last I checked, though, logic
did not function only in Aristotle's presence. Nor did the Hebrews have
their own brand of logic proffered by someone else. Notions like cause
and effect were not inoperable in ancient Israel. So, what Cragun thinks
is the point in his citing of "Aristotelian logic" is hard to say.

In the end, Cragun's screed against inerrancy is a straw man.
Even if the Bible was not inspired, it contains multiple truth claims
that would remain to be evaluated and argued for or against. As we shall
see next issue, however, arguing the virtues of individual passages is
precisely one of the most difficult tasks for Cragun, and to that extent
he is also using the shortcut of the designation of the Bible as the
"Word of God" in much the same way as the fundamentalists he so decries.

Another aspect of Cragun's case amounts to this, if I may dare to frame it in Aristotelian terms:

The Bible contains X horrible thing, and also some of these horrible things hurt my feelings or offend me.

Therefore the Bible is not inerrant.
Here again, however, robust failure is Cragun's chief methodology.
The second half of the book contains many more examples than the first
half, so we will save coverage of particulars for next issue. For now,
let it only be said that in each case, Cragun ironically reads the Bible
just like the very inerrantists he decries -- devoid of context and
definition.

We might also note an error from earlier in the book, one that
exemplifies Cragun's ineptness as a researcher. In one place, Cragun
makes the naive statement that, "Some of the bloodiest humanity's
conflicts have been religious." [1] Really? In reality, religion has
been behind very, very few wars. It was certainly not behind any of the
major wars of the 20th century. Here, Cragun is like the ignorant
stockbroker in Crichton's Timeline who has to be told that the
Hundred Years' War wasn't religious, because everyone at the time was
Catholic, and Protestants hadn't invented themselves yet.

We should also mention another variation on Cragun's theme, which
goes to the heart of why he thinks inerrancy is a heresy. Basically, he
believes that inerrancy has caused people to enforce the Bible's
horrible teachings, and indicates that if it were not for inerrancy, we
wouldn't be doing intolerant things like opposing gay marriage. He also,
rather foolishly, blames inerrancy for the creation of many divisions
in the church. In this, Cragun has fallen for the naive approach of
blaming the instrument for the acts of the person using the instrument.
It does not occur to him that even a believer in an errant Bible can
deem the Bible authoritative on select points. After all, even Cragun
himself uses the Bible in an authoritative way to argue that it does not
call itself "the Word of God." And so, Cragun's designation of
inerrancy as a "heresy," even if correct, would be nothing more than a
simple-minded band-aid solution that would shift, not erase, the problem
that he alleges is occurring.

A final point for this round is that Cragun tackles the sort of
"inerrancy" that is also devoid of context, which we have previously
condemned from authors as notable as Dr. Norman Geisler. How he would
handle a more informed and contextualized rendition of inerrancy is
difficult to say. The one thing we can say is that he is apparently too
busy being offended to bother to look for alternatives.

Friday, December 16, 2016

The ink isn't dry yet on the ballots, but we already have the inevitable arising: People are saying that Donald Trump is the Antichrist.

Now let me make something clear: I didn't vote for Trump. I didn't vote for Clinton, either: Mrs. H and I were so disgusted by the available choices that we both voted for some third party candidate who went by "Rocky." I was tempted to write in Donald...as in Donald Duck.

But whatever you may think of Trump, it's more than a little silly to claim that he's the Antichrist. Actually, the reasons people are giving to think this have all been done before -- about Ronald Reagan, Prince Charles, and a host of other figures.

For that reason, I decided to make my next ebook project about this subject. It's not very long, and it won't be out until next week. But it does appear to be a badly needed topical discussion.

More broadly, it shows yet another example of Christians needing to learn from the past. In one of my recent videos, I showed that the "ten nation confederation" of Revelation has been variously identified as European nations, barbarian tribes, Communist nations, and most recently, Islamic nations. Have a look.

This "Trump as Antichrist" thing is just another end times switcheroo game of the sort we've been playing for years.